2020-10-13
Online and offline hate speech targeting Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims has reared its head in the run-up to national elections in November, as some candidates and others target the largely disenfranchised and despised ethnic minority group to gain support from voters.
Rights groups and hate speech experts warn that inflammatory language could stoke anti-Muslim, nationalist sentiment and incite ethnic and religious riots at a critical time, as it did during communal violence between Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine state in 2012 that left more than 200 people dead and led to the confinement of 130,000 Rohingya in internal displacement camps.
The spread of hate speech and fabricated reports online pose a significant risk to the general election, they say, because of the influence of social media on Myanmar’s 22 million internet users — roughly 41 percent of the country’s population of 54 million.
“The targeting of the Rohingya in the lead-up to the elections is one manifestation of Myanmar’s overall culture of exclusion,” Andrea Gittleman, senior program manager at the United States Holocaust Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, said in emailed comments to RFA.
“The disenfranchisement of the Rohingya and the vilification of the group have become normalized, that it has become more and more normalized for candidates to target the Rohingya in an attempt to attract more popular support,” she said.
The government has taken few measures to address the hate speech problem in the Buddhist-majority country where Rohingyas are routinely persecuted and denied work and educational opportunities. Most of the several hundred thousand Rohingya living in Myanmar do not have the right to vote.
The Rohingya are widely viewed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, but they have lived in Rakhine on the Bay of Bengal coast for generations under ancient kingdoms later conquered by the Burmese and which became part of British India in the 19th century.
After the former Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948, the Rohingya received National Registration Cards issued by the government that carried full citizenship rights.
But in 1982, Myanmar enacted a Citizenship Law that limited citizenship to members of the “national races” seen as having settled in the country prior to the beginning of British rule in 1824. The Rohingya were not included among the 135 official ethnic groups and were suddenly excluded from full citizenship.
“Discrimination against the Rohingya runs deep in Myanmar’s society,” Claire Thomas, deputy director of London-based Minority Rights Group International (MRG), said in an email. “Candidates are flaming the fires of hate and capitalizing on it since many from the community cannot vote.”
Myanmar’s Ministry of Transport and Communications created a Social Media Monitoring Team (SMMT) in February 2018, receiving a parliament-approved budget of roughly 6.4 billion kyats (U.S. $4.9 million) to curb hate speech and fabricated reports on social media that could disrupt rule of law, security, and social stability.
The body has been criticized, however, for not enforcing the removal of inflammatory speech online and for deleting posts that are critical of the ruling National League for Democracy party and the government, though the NLD has denied that it removes criticism.
Though President Win Myint told Union Election Commission (UEC) officials and government ministers in early July to prevent the spread of hate speech and any religious incitement that could threaten or thwart the Nov. 8 election, incidents still have occurred.
After the official two-month pre-election campaign period began in September, independent candidate Kyaw Soe Htut, who is running for a parliamentary seat in Yangon’s Latha township, used an anti-Rohingya slogan on campaign poster.
He is competing for the seat against candidates from the NLD, opposition Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), Union Betterment Party (UBP), United Democratic Party (UDP), and National Democratic Force (NDF).
The posters contained three Banyan leaves — a symbol used by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority — and the slogan “No Rohingya.”
The West Yangon District Election Sub-commission ordered the candidate to remove the signs “to avoid a conflict if someone objected to them,” the body’s chairman Khin Maung Win told RFA on Sept. 22.
But Kyaw Soe Htut defied the order, saying that his slogan did not breech campaign rules and that it was not a religious issue. He also pointed out to the election sub-commission that the Rohingya are not among Myanmar’s official 135 ethnic minority groups, Khin Maung Win said.
Kyaw Soe Htut said he would comply with the request only if the national-level UEC instructed him to do so.
“We have informed the UEC about the matter, and the UEC will decide,” Khin Maung Win said.
At the time, RFA could not reach Kyaw Soe Htut for comment, though he told local media that his attorney said the language used on the posters was legal.
The candidate also said he was exercising his right to freedom of expression, and noted that his belief was in line with that of former president Thein Sein and current military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing that there are no Rohingya in Myanmar.
NLD spokesman Myo Nyunt said he believed candidates should not use such slogans on their campaign posters.
But he added, “Because we don’t recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group in Myanmar, his campaign does not violate the election commission’s rules against using religion and nationality.”
‘A very serious time’
USDP spokesman Nandar Hla Myint agreed with Kyaw Soe Htut’s reasoning, saying, “It is true that we have no ethnic group called Rohingya in our country, but his issue is for the Union Election Commission to decide.”
The move prompted fresh calls from rights organizations that politicians not conduct racial or religious campaigns against a particular group.
“Kyaw Soe Htut’s shocking use of ‘No Rohingya’ as a campaign slogan in the ethnically and religiously diverse Latha township was discouraging,” MRG’s Thomas said.
“It seems that hate speech will again play a significant role in this 2020 election, with candidates such as the Yeomany Development Party’s Michael Kyaw Myint having direct connections to online and offline hate speech,” she said, referring to a Buddhist nationalist activist who has agitated against the country’s Muslims.
Muslim community leader Aye Lwin, who once sat on a government advisory commission on resolving the religious and ethnic divisions in Rakhine state where the majority of Rohingya live, objected to the anti-Rohingya slogan.
“There is no evidence that we have only 135 ethnic groups in Myanmar, and nobody has said it officially other than the former military government,” he said.
“The campaign slogan implying that the Rohingya are not included among the 135 ethnic groups goes against the constitution and the Election Law because it fosters hatred,” he said.
Aung Myo Min, executive director of the human rights group Equality Myanmar, also disapproved of the language used on the campaign posters.
Though Kyaw Soe Htut said he is exercising his freedom of expression, “he is a parliamentary candidate, [and] his campaign posters are in public places,” Aung Myo Min said.
“The current period is a very serious time concerning race and religious conflicts, so he shouldn’t use these words in his campaign,” he said.
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